Daily Painting - Feb 4, 2026
2026-02-04
This new chat GPT trend is certainly showing me a lot about people I know and people in general who I don't know. It shows how many people are either unaware or don't care about a number of issues using AI in any creative form has: the environmental toll that ai data centers are causing; the theft of intellectual property experienced by artists, photographers, videographers, musicians, graphic designers, illustrators, etc, whose work was used to train these genAI machines; and the absolute silliness of hopping on trends just for the sake of hopping on trends.
When I was young, I heard that age-old phrase "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too?" So many people seem content, or downright desperate, to fit in that they don't even question why they're doing what they're doing, or even considering if their actions have any consequences.
"Everyone else is doing it, so I guess I should too."
And I've seen a fair number of people, friends and strangers alike, who are admittedly doing this latest "trend" but they don't know why, or they don't have a good reason to. They're just doing it blindly.
I'm a contrarian at heart - if it's popular, if it's all everyone is talking about, I tend to avoid it. I learned long ago that just because something or someone is popular, does not inherently mean that it is good. Usually it means they have a good, healthy marketing budget. Coca-Cola? Gross. McDonald's? Overpriced garbage. Bohemian Rhapsody? Boring as hell. Queen is talented but when everyone acted like that song was the only song they had in their catalog and blasted the song on repeat ad nauseam, I wanted to throw myself out of a moving car.
So while everyone is feeding The Plagiarism Machine their facial data and occupation information, adding to the global water bankruptcy and evaporating our drinking water into thin air, I'll continue to abstain and be happy not hopping on the bandwagon.
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Feb 4, 2026
4" x 4"
Acrylic on Canvas